The Merkel administration

At the start of the new millennium, Germany remained a leader in Europe and was the key to the continent’s security, stability, and prosperity. For more than 50 years, from Adenauer to Kohl, Schröder, and Merkel, Germans had played an important role in the creation of European institutions. Germany remains essential to the success of both the EU’s ambitious program of economic and political integration and its efforts to expand to include members from the former Soviet bloc. Germany will also be an important part of European efforts to craft a new security strategy, based on an enlarged NATO and a revised relationship with the United States.

In Germany’s parliamentary elections on September 27, 2009, Merkel’s mandate as chancellor was renewed, this time with the CDU-CSU and the FDP winning enough seats to form a coalition. The SPD, which since 2005 had served as the junior partner in a grand coalition with the CDU-CSU, thus was forced into opposition. Germany comfortably weathered the debt crisis that shook the rest of the euro zone, and Merkel and French Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy brokered a series of deals that were intended to contain the damage to the single currency.

While Merkel’s international presence was on the rise, she suffered domestically. The resignations of Pres. Horst Köhler in 2010, Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg in 2011, and Pres. Christian Wulff in 2012 were all blows to Merkel’s prestige. After Japan’s Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011, Merkel pledged to phase out nuclear power in Germany by 2022, but this move came too late to boost the CDU’s performance in state elections later that month. In contrast, the Green Party, which had long opposed nuclear power, captured enough support to form a government in Baden-Württemberg, a CDU stronghold since 1953. Joachim Gauck was elected president of Germany in March 2012, becoming the third person to hold that office in as many years. Unaffiliated with any political party, Gauck was a popular choice for the largely ceremonial role because of his history as a pro-democracy dissident in East Germany and his supervision of the Stasi archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall. For the first time since Germany’s reunification, the posts of both chancellor and president were held by individuals from the former East Germany.

As the campaign for the 2013 federal election began to intensify, the CDU coalition continued to suffer setbacks at the state level. Elections in Lower Saxony in January 2013 shifted the balance of power in the Bundesrat, giving the Greens and the SPD a majority in the upper house of Germany’s legislature. Peer Steinbrück, the SPD candidate for chancellor, had served as finance minister under Merkel in the grand coalition government from 2005 to 2009. While his performance in that role was widely praised, its connection with the Merkel administration made it difficult for Steinbrück to set himself apart from the incumbent. The sole televised debate between the candidates was inconclusive, and Merkel’s personal popularity was bolstered by strong economic numbers, which included an unemployment rate that was the lowest since reunification.

Her handling of the economy and her approach to the euro-zone debt crisis appeared to receive a huge endorsement from the German electorate when the CDU and CSU captured nearly 42 percent of the vote in the September 22, 2013, election, winning almost an absolute majority of the seats and setting up Merkel to become the third chancellor in the post-World War II era to win three elections. Because her government’s junior partner, the FDP, failed to reach the 5 percent threshold for representation for the first time in the postwar period, Merkel faced the possibility of forming another grand coalition with the SPD (which finished second with about 26 percent of the vote) or bringing the Green Party (which finished just behind The Left Party with about 8 percent) into government, though neither party was likely to come without a great deal of bargaining. After two months of negotiations, a grand coalition between the CDU-CSU and SPD was proposed, but it hinged on the approval of SPD members in an unprecedented party ballot. In December 2013 more than three-fourths of SPD voters voiced their support for the coalition. Among the stated priorities for the new government were the continued transitioning of Germany’s energy system to renewable sources and the adoption of the country’s first minimum wage law.

Merkel’s third term was dominated by internal and external threats to the stability of the EU. The Syrian Civil War, ongoing strife in Libya, and unrest elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East precipitated an influx of refugees in Europe on a scale unseen since World War II. As countries reinstated internal border controls, it appeared that one of the hallmark achievements of the Schengen Agreement was under threat. Merkel remained committed to preserving the spirit of Schengen, however, and more than one million migrants entered Germany in 2015. In southern Europe, Greece chafed at the terms of its bailout package, and, in the east, Russian-backed insurgents continued to wage a destructive war in southeastern Ukraine. In February 2015 Merkel helped broker a cease-fire agreement between the warring parties in Ukraine, but the bloodshed continued, albeit at a slightly reduced pace.

The backlash against migrants fueled the rise of populist and nationalist parties across Europe, and in Germany the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD) shifted its platform from one that was primarily Euroskeptic to one that was expressly anti-immigrant and anti-Islamic. The move paid off, and the AfD posted a string of impressive results in local elections in 2016. The victories of the “leave” camp in the June 2016 “Brexit” vote and of Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential election seemed to indicate that nationalist sentiment was on the ascent in Western democracies. Merkel, however, continued to position herself as a pragmatic centrist, having largely ceded the far right to the AfD, and in November 2016 she announced that she would seek a fourth term as chancellor.

When general elections were held on September 24, 2017, the CDU-CSU captured the most votes but fell far short of a majority. The SPD, which had governed with Merkel in a grand coalition since 2013, posted its worst showing in 70 years, winning barely 20 percent of the vote. The Greens and the Left secured representation in parliament with around 9 percent each, and the FDP returned to government with more than 10 percent of the vote. The AfD, which had narrowly missed the 5 percent cutoff point for parliamentary representation in 2013, surged to capture nearly 13 percent of the vote. SPD leader Martin Schulz declared that his party would not rejoin a coalition with Merkel, but, after talks between Merkel and the FDP collapsed in November 2017, Germany was faced with the possibility of fresh elections. Schulz consequently reversed himself, and months of additional negotiations between the SPD and CDU-CSU led to the forging of another grand coalition. As the largest party outside of the government, the AfD would be afforded certain parliamentary privileges traditionally conferred upon the main opposition party.